


Today is Tisha B'Av

by Eavans



Category: Unsere Mütter unsere Väter | Generation War
Genre: (all implied) - Freeform, Anxiety, Comfort, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Holidays, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Rebuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 13:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eavans/pseuds/Eavans
Summary: Viktor Goldstein remembers the day of Jewish suffering two months after the fall of Berlin. He has nothing anymore, except his friends.





	Today is Tisha B'Av

**Author's Note:**

> Viktor was my favorite character throughout this show. I was surprised at seeing no fics about him intimately, and I thought he deserved a perspective amidst this all. I think their lives in allied-controlled Berlin would have been very difficult, and I tried to stay as accurate to their rebuilding process as I knew. My own grandmother, who lived in Dresden after the war, tells me quite often how horrible it was _after_ compared to even during the war, and much of it she won't talk about at all because of how desperate people became.
> 
> I hope I was able to show _some_ hope in this though, even if I think all three would be very far away from their happy ending. I think the process of rebuilding would test them more than anything.
> 
> I am also not Jewish, so if I got any tenant of the faith or central theme of Tisha B'Av wrong please don't hesitate to tell me. I grew up Christian (read my fair share of the Old Testament though), so my knowledge is really quite shaky. Thank you for reading.

“Today is Tisha B’Av,” Victor murmurs over coffee.

Charly and Wilhelm stay silent. They stop cooling their cups and look up. Neither knows anything about it.

“Shalom,” Wilhelm smiles a bit, testing his lips. He worries if he drags them up too much they will break from lack of use.

“Shalom,” Victor smiles back.

“What can we do?” Charly asks.

Wilhelm puts his cup down on the crate they use as a table. “Yeah, anything.”

Victor cries.

* * *

Tisha B’Av sits cold and empty. It is the day of remembering Jewish tragedies. One remembers the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians, and then the second temple by the Romans, and then the calamities and pillages and pogroms, and one is left with emptiness. There are entire families he knew that no one would speak of again, entire city blocks slaughtered for being _Juden._ He has no one to fast with him or pray with him anymore.

It is July 18, 1945 in Berlin, German — and being up in a one bedroom apartment after the hell he has seen, Tisha B’Av feels like too much to endure.

He doesn’t know whether his fasting was intentional or not. He remembers the solemn, starving nights as a child as the prayers were read out, wanting nothing more than to steal a slice a bread.

Today is not much different. Viktor is nauseous, quiet, dreading (it feels) the seconds of living. It works then than getting food is hard, the Soviets taking their rations and safety of trying to steal any —because guns— Viktor has learned, are the ones in power. They have all felt hungry, in more ways than small bones under taunt skin. They are hungry for love and meaning and peace, and there is so little of that to go around in your home and mind in constant rubble.

* * *

Viktor had liked photography. It’s how he and his friends could capture their smiles forever, the small black camera holding their memories so they didn’t have to. They could go on having fun pretending Charly didn’t have a crush of Wilhelm, go on stealing Friedhelm’s book when he wasn’t looking and making Greta wear all the ugly clothes that went through Goldstein & Son when she got them angry.

He doesn’t have any photos left except his parent's wedding photo and the the one of the five of them. Maybe it's a blessing he has that photo of their wedding, he won't have the agony of forgetting their faces little by little, day by day. That is left for their voices and their smell, the timbre of their laugh and how he fit into their chests when he was a boy. It will be the same with Greta, a photo cannot help him remember how she kissed him like there absolutely nothing left in the world.

But the photos he had seen running through Poland had been disgusting ones, secret photos of what they did to his parents and friends and neighbors. Of sick and dying people waiting to die for no _goddamn_ reason.

And the camera is long gone too, everything,  _everything_ is gone. 

Victor had liked photography, but he knows now there isn’t anything to take photos of anymore. He has to remember for himself now.

* * *

“It’s been two months,” Wilhelm says later that day, after coming home with rations. “Since we met again.”

Victor is happy there are calendars again. Since 1942 there has only been seasons, his eyes left to watch the leaves swell and blister and dry and fall and then rot away, before the sun and rain level and the swelling began again. He did not have birthdays or Yom Kippur or Hanukah, and Viktor was fine with that. He was happy he didn’t have to compare what he was doing then to his old life, eating half-rotten meat in the forests and wondering if he was going to die that night, cold and alone. He only had the position of the sun and the leaves to remind him of time, healing wounds and the bite of being hungry. He feels more human again. Perhaps they are just animals, but there is something in a paper separated by lines with numbers and circles with a tick telling him what to do that makes him feel a _little_ less like that.

“I know, it feels like it’s been years.”

Charly finishes sewing up an old dress and gets up. The apartment is the only one they could find for cheap enough, a one bedroom haunt with a sink. They are lucky for that.

Victor stays silent. He is hungry from this fast, but it isn’t anything new. He is good at silent. They know he loves him, even if can’t bring himself to talk much anymore.

* * *

The sun is setting and Victor finds it odd still seeing it from indoors. It is obscured by windows and bounced from broken window panes, the sky dusty and the colors shattered on the white rubble below them.

He no longer has his prayer shawl; the long, white _tallit_ that had draped his grandfather’s and then his father’s shoulders is gone and there are only hands there now.

It is Charly and Wilhelm’s hands that rest on him. They are the weight on his shoulders now, shielding him as they had before the war. Charly had wanted to knit one herself but the materials were too expensive right now, and so their fingers weave on him instead. There is always tomorrow, even if Victor goes West like he has to. There isn’t anything left for him in the East except more silence and pain, and they all know it.

“I want to pray _kinott,_ ” he says, but he cannot remember the words. There are no prayer books or Torahs anymore, no _tallitot_ or _kippot_ to keep him warm and help him remember. He can not read from the Book of Lamentation or Job either, no learned voice guiding through it.

And so he sits, with the three of them on the ground with him, speaking the prayers and telling the stories he can remember through tears.

There are two candles lit for him, crude tallow things Wilhelm had gotten for him from the black market. He doesn’t know if it was years of being cold, but they are unbelievable warm against his skin now.

* * *

They only bought from the black market when their rations didn’t cover. Charly had hated it, having to be tested by doctors in case a Soviet had forced himself on her, the shame of that submission for food.

There is no love in saving someone from rape every other week or speaking of marrying so they’ll be safer from the soldiers, there is only broken Soviet noses with tears and fear, only half-truth versions of commitment. Viktor sees it, the hesitant kisses between Charly and Wilhelm in their tri-shared little apartment, but that is all they are — distant kisses. They are too different for bold kisses that mean anything more than lust now, too many fears and pains in their heart to trust the other like they once could have.

A lot of the times, Viktor wants Greta back too, so he can kiss her and feel something.

But really, it’s the old times he wants. He would not kiss Great with love if she was next to him now, he would kiss her as Wilhelm takes Charly, to forget everything he’d seen for one moment's bliss. They are too different and too selfish now, there is no naivety that love can conquer all. He only wishes he could have said goodbye to her, and that is what makes Victor saddest of all.

Victor does not like it when Charly kisses him. She is sad, and he is sad, and it makes his nerves as worse as it makes her’s better when that happens. They don’t talk about marrying for her safety much. They hold hands instead.

Viktor wonders if his friends will get their happy ending, but he knows how many years that will take. For kisses to mean something between them, that is.

But the three have friendship, and each others love, and that is enough for now.

* * *

The candles flicker.

Viktor takes their hands off his shoulders. He holds them in each of his hands and squeezes tight. He has missed being _safe._

“Pray with me,” he whispers, and it is hard for any of them to believe in a God anymore, but they continue for him, eyes closed and hands tight. Viktor remembers one prayer, the mourner’s _kaddish,_ and he lets the words carve against his throat in litany. He prays and prays, repeating it each time for each parent he has lost, his grandparents, his friends, his neighbors, his _God._

And he prays and he prays and he _prays_.

Viktor prays until he feels he will faint. The amount of tears passing his cheeks cannot be possible without some fit of consciousness, all the pain and fear of years and years _free_ . They have seen and lived in hell but they are _safe._

 _Safe_.

He hears Charly sobbing too. She cries for the terror she has seen, the miles of bodies she could not fix, their screams louder than the radio she had to turn up to drown it. She is shaking as much as he — because it is _over._

_Over._

And he hears Wilhelm cry as well, punchy, scared crying. He cries for his brother, for his mean father still breathing while Friedhelm rots. He cries as if he has never cried before, and after, he’s almost convinced it was.

Victor can barely breathe anymore. The hands they are pressing to one another are of the same mold, the same name is still attached and the eyes leaking broken glass look the same way as it did four years previously. But it’s everything _inside_ that’s changed, all of their nightmares and dreams, their shaky hands and temper and desperation they throw at one another now.

“Shalom,” Victor lets out a watery smile, remembering their last party in Berlin.

“Shalom,” they whisper back, meaning each syllable. _“Shalom_.”

* * *

The room has two candles and three friends.

They are five once more.


End file.
